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Published: November 16th 2005
Burn, Baby, Burn
Classic Amazon Rainforest Clearing - the updraft created a thunderhead cloud visible for 20 miles!Well, another team decision to stay, or really a lack of any real decision to move on, and we stay another day in another spectacularly boringly, over-inhabited by beautiful people and all the beautiful trappings, and all the touristy gift boutiques and galleries(?)...who comes to a beach resort and needs to buy art?....and its low season so at least one can negotiate better deals and the service is keenly offered...restaurants are fantastic but you wonder, when they are empty, just how fresh are the crabs?...I saw an old woman with a bag of crabs yesterday and wanted to follow her to the restaurant where she was delivering them to...later, at a restaurant, I accosted the waitress and using basic sign language mimed crabs, fingers scuttling sideways, thumb and forefinger making nipping movements...she at got it and we all cracked up...but she didn´t have any!
So, another extremely muggery morning, Bong Gia is the morning greeting altho´it sounds more like something you´d be offered in Bali or Thailand?...rather than good mornin´in Portuguesa....anyway...everyone moving very slowly, the torpor of the tropics, do those words have the same derivation?...a guy opposite the pousada is suspended by one foot in a rope sling, 10 metres
Thinking about it
Getting on the Amazing Amazon Star... up a coco palm hacking away, slowly, the branches and cocos that drop alarmingly and loudly onto the footpath the only things moving with any haste!....its just another Bali...even the shops and buildings have the Pacific thatched roof style of the islands...bit of Fiji, bit of Thailand, Indo etc etc....
With the formidable combination of heat, wetness and cheap labour, instant and spectacular and constantly maintained gardens and pools and borders are all just a moment away...its all so flaming lush!...and fecund, the whole of Brasil is on heat, everything and everyone is into sex and breeding.....babies, pregnant women, children, baby cows, pigs, chooks its going on everywhere....follow-me-home-and-fuck-me glances from limpid brown eyes on the street, beautiful women everywhere, its is really HOT..I´m sweating..got to concentrate and get this done....
So, whats this got to do with Manaus?..well, having a lay-day, and being soltero..ie. no lay....I´m doing the travelling writer thing...copious notes in the little notebook, (the last 2 pages for those of you concentrating), and writing stories in the big notebook...thinking of sending something off to the sunday Age travel comp....maybe...it all seems to flow so well at 3am, tossing and turning dodging mozzies and seeing vast panoramic novels
Ted tests the plank!
Getting on the Amazing Amazon Star... of stupendous breadth of feeling, immense depth of philosophical thought....you know how it is...maybe everyone has the ability to think it all, its only the true writers who manage to get it down.....or do I just need to concentrate for more than 2 nano seconds, cut the crap and put in the hard yards and so on and so on...rely on the super-sensitive sophistication of my readership to extract the big picture?
So, as a warm up, and also to postpone the inevitable putting off that will bring coco gelado time, then lunch, nap o´clock, afternoon stroll, dinner and bed...how it all just flashes by...I´m only doing this one to try and sort out my camera and get some pix up for you...and they are of Manaus.
Hey, the photos worked...I´m a happy snapper again altho´its probable something will stuff up again next time!
And now the cybercafe is filling up, the remnants of last night over the front of their t-shirts, loudly abusing the peace by shrieking into the internet phone service...the world muffled to them by the headsets, impervious to the tranquility aforehand...but that seems to be the way..is it the world at large?..have the forces for self
Starting on board
Getting on the Amazing Amazon Star... preservation that let the race survive now manifest in the drive for more and more, bugger the rest, will the rich inherit the Earth?, doesn´t sound like they´ll be too happy even if they do....but the chances are they will and they´ll try...but there seems to be a direct correlation between the gathering of wealth and the amount of worry it creates!...I rarely see poor people worrying about money...or complaining about taxes for that matter..but lets not get too far down that path or my bill here will be way too high...in every sense!
And a couple of the fairly typical local macho-boys are really pumping the voice system...there is a pretty strong culture of the macho here...like a lot of Latin America...maybe thats what makes relationships difficult...lots of the women I´ve met are divorced and say they´ll never go out with a local man again...one particularly attractive young woman was chatting me up while we waited for the ferry yesterday, or the day before, she thought 56 was the perfect age for a man...be still oh restless heart, thoughts and possibilities flooding my brain, or something like that.....she was 29, I told her I thought it was the perfect
Almost there!
Still a big drop to the deck age for a woman, she told me she was divorced....I asked if she wanted to get married.... she said yes.... I said...you just want to wait 10 years and become a rich widow?..no, she insists it would be great...she goes on about how bad Brasilian men are...I asked if she knows about Australian men?...then the gates opened, she got back on the bus and I rode off!
So, here´s some photos...the land clearing north of Manaus...probably more speccy on Ted´s site...loading the bikes..you can see my bike already on board, I wasn´t game to look until it was already on!...and a couple of the landless movement shanty shacks by the side of the road...and then a couple of shots of the place where we´re staying...just to test the directo-from-el-camera and it works too...sort of...Chau
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